Review Detail

Argent. What a game. Why do I love argent? I love the idea of worker placement games. And I’ve played more than a handful, keeping some and moving on from others. But generally, most of the interaction in WP games is fairly passive. “I take this spot so that you can’t” is the classic example. There are other paths for player interaction among various games. But generally, WP fall on the shallow end of this pool.

Argent doesn’t. This is a game of blasting your opponents students, of locking areas so they can’t get in there, of sneaking around behind other people under a cloak of invisibility. There are enough spaces on the board that everything you do is NOT at the expense of others. You can play a passive, nice game if you’d like. But so much of the game is geared to giving you tools to allow you to mess with other people’s plans. If it then helps yours as well (and you should try to make that happen!) then so much the better.

There is a ton of stuff in argent (and I’ve got expansions to make that number larger!). The argument that a good editor could probably have reduced the bloat a bit is very valid. The process for ‘learning spells’ while not difficult, involves 3 different resources, one of which has no token. I think it is needlessly convoluted….though it is not complicated. And the stacks and stacks of cards….supporters with no abilities shouldn’t exist(though the ones with two schools can stay). Items that repeat starting spells, or spells that are simply variations on a theme….could probably be removed. Using mini-cards for most of the items/supporters would have been an easy change. Legendary spells need to stand out more from regular spells.
Argent at its heart is not complicated. Take a quick action, take a regular action. But those actions can have so many different results, that there is always something new to look at and do.

The 2nd edition changes push this even higher for me. The new bases eliminate the annoyance of putting the stupid headstones into the stupid bases where the stupid miniatures wouldn’t stay in. The new rule of marks breaking ties first instead of influence is a perfect example of tweaks that work, without changing how the game plays.